Review by lsandy4 - Just for the Summer

lsandy4 's review for:

Just for the Summer by Abby Jimenez

3.75

emotional funny hopeful lighthearted reflective fast-paced

Plot or Character Driven: Character

Strong character development: Complicated

Loveable characters: Complicated

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

I felt that the author sacrificed a lot of the development of Emma and Justin (the leads) and their romance to just focus on Emma’s relationship with her mother, Amber. Like most of the book is just about Emma dealing with the reemergence of her mother, who neglected and abandoned her as a child, and Justin is just there supporting Emma, no real questions asked.

Despite being a book that is about two people trying to break a curse that their exes find their soulmates right after them, we don’t read much about the exes or why those relationships didn’t work out; we just infer that Emma has always been someone whose trauma has not allowed her to commit to anyone and zip on Justin (besides the one in the Reddit post, but that’s not really discussed further).

Speaking of Justin, his trauma with his mom going to jail is solved with Emma just saying “be empathetic” midway through the story. Like I get changing your perspective and reframing but Emma’s toxic positivity of always being empathic and never getting angry over legitimate angry-inducing things is literally the whole problem with Emma and her mom. And Justin doesn’t fully apply the method anyway because he just decides to be nicer to his mom before she goes to jail. No deep talk between them, no apologies between them, no explanations directly from the mom about why she did the things that landed her in jail. At least Emma got to finally get angry, felt rage, and I appreciated that. Also, Justin’s adaption to becoming the legal guardian of his siblings is also something that basically happens “off-screen”.

Also, I didn’t like how the only way the author decided to show that this book did in fact have people of color in it was to say that two minor characters had “thick Mexican accents” and have them occasionally say a word or two in Spanish. The author thanks someone in the acknowledgments for helping with the Spanish in the book and all I could think was “Wow, big thanks for the easiest job in the world.” There was barely any Spanish.

Also didn’t enjoy the constant product placement.

All in all, the reason that this book has such a high review is because as like a book version of a Hallmark movie, it’s a fine, easy read. Justin was an almost perfect ML and Maddy, Emma’s bestie, was the most supportive friend to ever live, and I did really enjoy that. Also, I read the book on Libby so for something I didn’t pay for and got pretty quickly, it was fine. Also, and more importantly, the relationship between Emma, her mother and the trauma was written well enough that I (a person who tries very hard to be aloof with her feelings and also has an emotionally immature parent) was able to bring this book to my therapist and be like “this is how I feel and I don’t want to feel this way”, particularly about Emma’s trauma effecting romance. So 3.75 for making me cry about my life through Emma’s realization that she lacks love in hers, I suppose.

Content Warnings